jadero @ jadero @programming.dev

Fully retired now and one of the things I'd like to do is get back into hob

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2 yr. ago

I wrote this elsewhere:

He brought me much joy in tinkering, first with Pascal, then with Oberon.

In looking up and then reading that article, I discovered that not only has Oberon been actively maintained, but that there is a successor, A2. Now that I'm back to being a hobbyist, I look forward to more joyful tinkering courtesy of his great mind.

Edit: in the course of further investigation, I found many dead links. But I also found this A2 repository that shows activity from as recently as 2 months ago.

He brought me much joy in tinkering, first with Pascal, then with Oberon.

In looking up and then reading that article, I discovered that not only has Oberon been actively maintained, but that there is a successor, A2. Now that I'm back to being a hobbyist, I look forward to more joyful tinkering courtesy of his great mind.

Edit: in the course of further investigation, I found many dead links. But I also found this A2 repository that shows activity from as recently as 2 months ago.

Thanks. I guess it's the perpetual problem of learning something new. Instead of starting at the beginning, we trick ourselves into thinking that we can skip the fundamentals. Then we have difficulty and think that the problem is one of complexity or just over our heads instead of our approach.

I am in a perpetual wonderland of git confusion, but this was a good read. And maybe I now have a pathway to enlightenment.

!squirrels@lemmy.ca

I'm pretty sure non-programmers share much of the blame. Here's what I imagine goes through the minds of most people, especially management types.

"Oh, a nerd. Great we need another nerd in here because things are not moving fast enough."

I've had job offers for everything from equipment maintenance and repair (because there was a PLC hooked up) to network administrator. It's all computers, right?

When trying to use some of the truly atrocious stuff that gets rolled out with a web interface, I get the distinct impression that random "nerds" are dropped into random slots. There is no consideration that maybe saying "nerd" is like saying "doctor". If that's all you look for, you might get an economist instead of a surgeon.

I convinced my managers to move away from waterfall to a more iterative process using a financial analogy. Pretty much everyone understands the concept of compound interest as it applies to both debt and savings.

I framed the release of small but functional components as the equivalent of small, regular deposits to a retirement account, where benefits start to accrue immediately and then build upon each other with every "deposit". I framed the holding off of a major project until completion as the accumulation of debt with no payment plan. I also pointed out that, like a sound investment strategy, the "portfolio" of features might require adjustment over time in order to meet objectives under changing circumstances, adding substantial risk to any monolithic project.

Not if he's off screen. It's only a visual cue if it's captured by the video.

If you have a separate video of the guy falling over dead, you can use that video to get a window of time to view in the other video, but one video that captures only parts of the scene can easily leave you with no visual cues.

Just to add to the "completely change fields" thing in light of your "move to the woods" option:

I did the move to the woods thing (technically, bald prairie...) and found that there were enough other people out there to still find work. And where I moved to, they were desperate enough for good workers that most employers were willing to train, including picking up the tab for short courses. Some of the jobs were pretty shitty (sometimes literally: I spent a few years cleaning out clogged sewer lines), but, for me, the rest of the lifestyle more than made up for it (we found a place on the shore of a lake).

Although my objective was to just ditch tech, once word of my past got around, I had to beat them off with a stick.

I was probably in a bit of a different place, too. My main objective was to bridge the decade between "I just don't want to work anymore" and my actual retirement.

Also, my wife might have gained more from the move than I did!

If you explore this route, I recommend looking into service organizations to join in the area. Joining one rapidly turns you from outsider to insider. Mine was volunteer fire and rescue.

I like the basic premise of GoVTT, that you trust the players to not cheat. I've got a project on the back burner to allow people to play online games the same way they play in person: rules are agreed upon and enforced collectively instead of imposed and enforced programmatically. I figure to start with ordinary playing cards, then build up from there.

Excellent! I'm working on my own workbench. I'm still at the design and layout stage, because, like pretty much every client I've ever had, I've fooled myself into thinking I have special requirements that can't be met with an existing, proven design.

I dealt with a similar situation by simply purchasing the code from my employer. I guess that technically it was a form of licensing, because we both had the right to use, modify, and resell as we saw fit as long as there were no infringements on branding or trademarks.

They may not offer favourable terms, but it might be worth asking.

I always read a lot. 100+ books a year, plus magazines. Then I got a job in the boonies and got home only on weekends. All of a sudden I was reading a book a day. Even with the library and used book stores, that was financially ruinous for our young family. So I bought a VIC-20, a used b&w tv, and the programmer's reference manual to take out to the work camps.. The savings on books paid for the system in just a few months.

One thing led to another and a decade or so later I made the transition from hobby to career. Now I'm retired and looking to reboot as a hobbyist.

Thanks. Done and done.

I actually think in some ways it's a good thing to overlook the technical side to a degree as well because technical skills are generally a lot easier to teach than the people skills. Assuming the fundamentals are there at least.

At one of my favourite places to work, the owner had a sticky note on the side of his monitor that read "Hire for attitude, train for skill, reward for excellence."

During one of our training sessions (I was teaching him Excel), I noticed that the sticky note was a different colour. I asked him about it and he said he rewrites it every Monday on a different colour so that it's always visible and always fresh in his mind because it's too easy to forget, even though he thought it was the secret to running a successful business.

I started and ended my working life as the proverbial blue collar worker, mostly a labourer. Programming was my hobby and I loved it. I lived and breathed and dreamt programming.

I went pro for one reason and one reason only: money. Well, okay, there was some satisfaction in helping nice people solve interesting problems, something that is rare when working as a labourer.

I knew my days were numbered when an HR goon started using transparent misinterpretations of various motivational theories to lecture me on how money really didn't matter that much to me. She was right in the sense that prefer I time at home to getting paid time-and-a-half for overtime, even when I'm clearly underpaid, but completely out to lunch when considering my desire for hobbies and travel.

Money may not be a very good motivator, but lack of money is one hell of a demotivator!

I'm just getting back into programming as a retirement hobby after leaving the field due to burnout 15 years ago. That means I'm only just starting to figure out editors and such.

I don't know of any code editors that use tab stops the way a word processor does. A word processor uses tab stops specifically for alignment at defined positions rather than tab characters equivalent to specific number of spaces (or tab key to insert specific number of spaces). Without the ability to set positional tab stops, I don't know that proportional fonts will be all that great for most people.

I took a look at your link to almost proportional fonts. Thanks. I don't know how I missed that, given that iA Writer is one of the editors I've been playing with for general purpose writing. (I've become disillusioned with the state of modern word processors.)

I've long preferred proportional fonts and positional tab stops like what you find in a WYSIWYG word processor. Got a tab position wrong? Drag it as appropriate or, if necessary, add a new one. In fact, during a period where I was doing far more writing than programming, in the days before code completion, I preferred my WYSIWYG word processor to my code editor. I had appropriate scripts and macros for cleaning up imported text files and to always save both native format and a text file with spaces in place of tabs. I also had different templates for different languages so that I could have custom processing for different languages. (It helps that a big part of that job was teaching people how to use word processors as far more than just electronic typewriters.)

Now, of course, the programmer's editor is an advanced tool tailored to the job, making it lunacy to even consider a word processor as code editor. Which doesn't mean that there aren't word processing concepts that might be valuable.

Nick Gravgaard has some good writing on the subject and links to a variety of resources, including to at least one proportional font designed for programming.

Going freelance. All the stuff I learned in formal and informal study and from those around me pales in comparison to what I learned from having to craft useful, affordable solutions for a wide variety of customers in several different fields.

It's true that certain aspects of my technical knowledge took a hit, but creating line of business software solutions in direct collaboration with the actual end-users was a transformative experience.

One of the most important things I learned is that approximately nobody actually knows much about how to efficiently and effectively use a computer. About one third of my time was spent teaching people how to use computers.